Home sales start strong in June

Official home sales numbers for June won't be reported until July 22, but early indications are it could end up one of the strongest months in years.

CLAYTON PARKWORD ON THE STREET

While local Realtors associations aren't scheduled to report their official home sales numbers for June until July 22, early indications are it could end up one of the strongest months in years. In Sunday's business section, the deed recordings of closed sales of new and existing homes for the first week of June take up three quarters of the page. That's the most in years. Realtors I spoke with this past week said sales of existing homes, which had been steadily improving this year, appear to have picked up even more in recent weeks. In Flagler County, there have been 287 closed sales of existing homes so far in June through Thursday, said Carole Keller, sales manager for Weichert Realtors-Hallmark Properties in Palm Coast, putting it in line to be the most sales in a single month since at least 2007, she said. Keller also said she expects the final tally for June in Flagler to be even higher as "we usually have an uptick at the end of the month." In Volusia County, Steve Koenig, the broker/owner of Koenig Realty in Daytona Beach, said he wasn't able to provide statistics for closed sales so far in June but said, "The Realtors I know are busy. ... All indications are that June will be even better than May's (19.4 percent countywide) increase over May of last year."

PENDINGS PROVIDE CLUE Koenig — who is also president of the Daytona Beach Area Association of Realtors — said he is not surprised that closed sales rose sharply in the first week of June because new pending sales — where a home is put under contract but the sale is not yet closed — shot up in May. According to statistics from area Realtors associations, new pending sales in May climbed 62.4 percent year-over-year in Volusia County, while in Flagler they were up 35.3 percent. Koenig said new pendings in the Daytona Beach area were up by an even greater amount — 90.6 percent compared with May 2012. Keller said she believes July could be another strong month for home sales as new pending sales in Flagler County in June "are way up for us, too."

PRICING REMAINS A KEY Koenig said, "It's become a market where when sellers put homes for sale at a fair market value they will sell." The statistics from area Realtors associations bear him out. In Volusia County, the homes whose sales closed in May were on the market a median of 66 days, compared with 81 days for homes sold in May of last year. In Flagler, the homes sold in May were on the market a median of 59 days, down from 78 for homes sold the same month in 2012. The median means equal numbers were greater than and less than that amount. Even with home sales on the rebound locally, it is still important to be realistic in setting asking prices, Koenig said. Would-be sellers who are too quick to ask for the moon without considering how much comparable nearby properties wound up selling for are bound to be disappointed, he cautioned. "A fair value is not how much you owe or how much you want," Koenig said.